


Point of Reference

by rabbitprint



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-12
Updated: 2010-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:39:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-CoM, pre-KH2. M/M, Xaldin and Xemnas. How many things can a person lose before there truly is Nothing left?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Uses KH1, CoM, and KH2._

The other five scientists don't talk about what Xehanort is, but they know. He's the leader. Becoming Nobodies cements that fact. It isn't because Xehanort is better at research, because he's _not_ \-- Even is the best at keeping clean notes and lined tables and organized equations. Even has the patience to tweak one variable at a time, methodically experimenting for hours to get the perfect balance of compounds. Even has, unfortunately, a scientist's temperament, stereotypically fussy. It's his greatest virtue, and also his most terrible vice.

Ienzo is smart, but gets too distracted, caught up in the details of the application instead of the results. Master Ansem used to call it _missing the fish for the water._ Ienzo overlooks whales.

If any of the other apprentices were asked, they'd mumble something about natural leadership, but that's not the entire truth. Not completely.

Xehanort is the dreamer. There's one in every crowd. Call it charisma, or vision, or that specialized breed of madness that can turn day into night with a single equation. The rest of them can't help but follow Xehanort whenever he speaks, like kids hungry for the next twist in a storybook.

But Xehanort isn't in control of himself either. He never has been. He tires easily, and he gets frustrated, and sometimes he's just a channel, or a _voice_ \-- spitting out theories that ride him day and night, ones he doesn't comprehend but needs to suggest anyway.

The words wear him down. They exhaust him. They drive him crazy.

Crazi_er._ Xehanort's always been strange.

So Xehanort says, _change our names_, and Xehanort says, _we're Dusks now_, and they all do it, they all follow along. Only half of the students believe him, but they've grown up together for years, and seeing someone drunk on autumnwine to the point of pink elephants tends to give a little luxury for friendly skepticism.

There's a lot of talk going on about differences. Dilan can't see any of them. He doesn't feel like something new -- like a mystical creature that was hatched with the death of the Bastion -- but just plain old _Dilan_. Dilan who's misplaced something along the way. Dilan who can't call himself that anymore, because that man existed on only one world; he'd never lived with the problems that are commonplace now.

_Xaldin_ is a word that tastes strange. Xaldin is a man who must deal with two worlds who want him dead, dead because he fits in neither, and that's all the excuse each side needs to destroy him.

Their nightmares are absent, at least. They'd all been intoxicated on Darkness during the last days of their research, addicted to power and wonder during the day while screaming themselves hoarse at night: five crazy apprentices following an even crazier amnesiatic, all living with a good-intentions king. Now the Shadows largely ignore them, leaving the survivors to guess at what they have become.

Braig complains endlessly about his missing guns. Elaeus is quietly horrified at the biological impossibilities of their Dusk bodies; he shares some of his observations privately with Dilan, about the lack of ecosystem in the City, and the risks of scurvy or liver toxins. Even goes on and on about how they've lost their ability to feel. And Xehanort agrees, so of _course_ everyone nods, even though Dilan suspects sometimes that the man's only fooling himself to make the past rest easier.

Because Xehanort hasn't changed. Not really. He's colder now, and more prone to smirking, but Dilan's seen the same behavior happen before in people when they've just had their hearts broken for one reason or another, who've become so determined _not_ to feel that they end up convincing themselves of the lie. Xehanort _bleeds_ hurt, but he claims that's impossible and Even spouts off tangential proof, and the rest of them sigh and go along with it.

Dilan supposes he should be grateful that he's always been practical. Without a heart, he won't be able to regret, won't be able to care if the life they had before is better than this.

"I think," Braig confides one day when they're both out on foot, avoiding Even's wild theories, "that what happened was we all got frozen in the state of our, uh." His mouth twitches like a salted slug before he settles on a word. "Deaths."

Dilan delivers a doubting look; it's Braig, and he's morally obligated never to give the gunner an easy time.

"I mean, it's like we're all permanently stuck in the condition of being pissed off."

"Go on," Dilan offers, because he can only think of one person who fits that description.

"Xehanort's still cranky about the Ansem thing. Even's spastic about his research. Ienzo's, well... he's Ienzo. Elaeus is calm and -- okay, it doesn't work."

Dilan gives a snort, the _I knew that already_ type, and pushes off the tower into thin air.

* * *

He never volunteers for the duty. If there had been anyone else who could have taken the role, Dilan would have gladly passed off the job, but Braig doesn't have as much experience working with the Dusks, and no one else can explore thin air safely. The rate of adaptation to their new powers has not been uniform. The risks of malformed experimentation are substantial.

So it comes down to Dilan to show each member of the Organization one of their newly-discovered birthrights: he shows them how to open the gates.

The first time that Braig steps through the dark portal into Nothingness, he falls. The first time Dilan steps through, he does as well -- and promptly spends the next ten minutes trying to kill Braig, who is hovering safely out of reach, laughing like a madman.

Space and wind are similar enough that the two oldest researchers are the optimal choices for scouts. Dusks are their only guides. Twilight Town is visited first by Braig; second by Dilan as they both test the waters, every moment tense as they wait for monsters to leap out and devour them whole. The town is too placid to be real, and there's a peace that's reminiscent of the Bastion, a little. Braig says he loves it.

Dilan doesn't, but never admits the truth.

But there are other worlds too, unexplored realms that the Darkness has only begun to encroach on. The Dusks scurry through the spaces between, cautious when the Heartless are about -- which is often enough to be _always_, and Dilan learns swiftly to predict the movements of the Shadows by judging the reaction of his Dragoon soldiers. Despite his loss of heart, he lacks the same affinity for Nothingness that the normal Dusks exhibit; Dilan's own identity separates him from whatever hive-mind the drone Nobodies are tapped into. It's a sacrifice he's willing to make.

Neither type of creature seems to realize that a floor is necessary when it comes to world travel, so Dilan gets in the habit of envisioning solid ground each time he opens a portal, reminding himself not to fall.

They find their way back each time by hopscotch. Dilan looks for Braig, Braig hunts out Dilan, and the point of reference that they form for one another brings them both safely home.

Dilan is privately surprised each time he goes between worlds and doesn't get lost in the process. He developed the method partially from trial and error. A lot of the time, it doesn't work properly, and he ends up on strange worlds, walking through forests raging with Shadows or icefields empty of life. He has seen beasts out of legend: dragons, griffins, talking mushrooms that hiccup poison. He has seen a city of stone, populated by statues which were eternally frozen in the midst of their former lives.

Other times, he can move as easily as a thought, and never gets lost.

Dilan and Braig have barely any opportunity to perfect using the gates before the other researchers are pestering them to share. It's only a matter of time before their unspoken leader decides to take the plunge as well; the only difference is that Xehanort waits until he's the very last one, later even than Elaeus or Even, and long behind Ienzo.

Out of all of them, Xehanort is also the one who uses his new name the most, and frowns whenever he's addressed differently. It would be humorous, if it wasn't so painful: Xehanort doesn't remember how _they_ once insisted on calling him Ansem, how the rest of the apprentices moved from jokes to forceful demands as part of the grand charade. He doesn't even seem to notice the irony in swapping his name to an anagram of their old mentor. _Xemnas_ is a simultaneous combination and denial of everything from their former lives at the Bastion, and if he hadn't known the man before, Dilan might even be fooled into thinking the change is real.

But when Xemnas forgets to be emotionless, there's life in his face again -- a simple thrill of discovery, and that's the expression that Dilan sees when they first step through the Darkness into Nothing.

Dilan knows at one point that he must have been equally impressed. Now the view is ordinary. He's already become accustomed to it. He'll walk through the gap between worlds at least twice more that day, according to his schedule; he has more than enough time to become blasé.

He turns away, confident that Xemnas will follow.

Only when he reaches the other side does Dilan realize that he's alone.

Xemnas hasn't moved. He's frozen at the mouth of the tunnel, surrounded by the kaleidoscope Dusk-sigils swarming through the air. Both his hands are limp at his sides; clothed in black leather, Xemnas looks like a scholar dressed falsely as a soldier. He has forgotten his gloves.

Normally Xehanort loves these kinds of things -- revels in manifestations of power, loves standing in thunderstorms and blizzards -- and being surrounded by raw Nothingness should be no different. Dilan can't be sure if the other man is unnerved. Trying to decipher Xehanort is a futile effort at best, and he gave up back when they were still in Intermediate Fusion classes.

At first, the lancer tries humor. "You can embrace Darkness, but not this?"

Silence.

Dilan waits for the symbols loop twice before he speaks again. "Are you afraid?"

"No. I'm just -- I don't know." Xemnas looks dazed with his own surprise, young as he had been in the Bastion. A flicker of that boy is in Xemnas's face for a moment; then it's gone. "I haven't seen anything like this before. Remember," he adds, wryly, "Unlike my Heartless, _I_ never got to experience the Darkness that came to take the Bastion."

"I know." Dilan does not look away. "I know."

Xemnas continues to balk. His feet remain planted on the small ledge of Darkness formed by the gate. Beyond that platform waits a drop into the void, a descent into the churning emptiness below with no escape. "Are you certain that it's safe?"

Vexed, Dilan strides along the length of the tunnel, stopping an arm's length away from the Superior. "The wind is there, Xemnas. The pathway is _there._ You just have to trust."

"That's a little difficult without a heart," the other man jests back, but some of the life has returned to his face, and Xemnas takes the first step without being prompted.

By the time he has made it a third of the way across, the hesitation has left his motions. He never strays more than a few feet away from Dilan's side; Dilan is the anchor in the whirlwind, as if the tunnel is a lance array, razored points spinning endlessly around his body.

Along the way, Xemnas's hand lifts, touching the sleeve of Dilan's coat very carefully, a delicate weight that does not leave an indentation on the supple leather to show where it's been.

No words are needed for understanding. This moment of weakness will not go outside the corridor, beyond this temporary manifestation of space. What happens between the two of them can be kept private, so long as it matters.

An exit to Twilight should normally be waiting for them on the other side -- that's the purpose of tunnels, to connect one point to another -- but Dilan has left the destination deliberately vague as a training exercise. He waits for Xemnas to study the shifting circle of the doorway as it hangs in the air, unattuned to any second world. Then he steps behind to the other man, and settles his fingers around Xemnas's wrists.

The lesson is really no different than showing a squire how to handle a spear, or position their weight on a longbow draw. Dilan guides Xemnas's hands patiently in his own, lifting them towards the portal, remembering the way he has done this for four other members already.

Xemnas's skin is very cool, as if even the circulation has slowed down from awe.

"Reach out with your senses," the lancer orders, and the instructions are bored and impersonal. "Search out the nearest concentration of Darkness. There should be several worlds in close proximity. Choose one, and then imagine this door linking to one at your destination."

"That's it?" The question is brisk.

"That's it."

Xemnas draws in a deep breath; fingers shift as he instinctively tries to take hold of something which does not exist. Black mist licks against his palms. Thorns burst out in a halo to circulate around them both; then the curving points twist and bury themselves into the gate, reinforcing the influence of Nothingness into Darkness.

Then it's over.

The portal stretches itself open before them both. No monsters come crawling out to attack; the tunnel they are standing in does not collapse, its structure undermined by the powers which have been channeled. The outline of the gate wavers slightly, but is otherwise stable, and Dilan can sense the presence of Twilight dimly on the other side.

He relaxes, unaware until now that he had tensed up. "Good."

Xemnas's mouth makes a tiny, quick smirk in the corner, and then he drops his hands, taking a quick step back from the door. There's not enough room to move; Xemnas bumps into Dilan's chest, his shoulder jarring against the lancer's chin. "These symbols," he blurts suddenly. "They're the same as the marks on the Dusks. Have you noticed," he then interrupts himself, "that all the Dusks we have seem to bear the same stamp? It's as if they are all artificially created by a sentient force, just like the Emblem Heartless -- so are there natural Dusks?" Xemnas's voice picks up enthusiasm without waiting for a response, sliding from one idea to another with the same speed as a fish in a flood. "Are _we_ the natural Dusks, since we have no mark -- "

"Enough, Xemnas." Pushing the other man aside as tactfully as he can, Dilan moves away. He has no great desire to stand in the middle of Nothingness holding _anyone_ in his arms, even by accident. "Enough thinking. Dusks opened this passage. That's probably why it's safe for us, and why it shows the same symbols."

"But it shouldn't be _our_ mark." Fumbling for logic, Xemnas turns his head to scan down the length of the tunnel. "We should have something for our own. Create a pattern that will be unique to us. I'll ask..." his voice trails off, and then slowly revives again. "I'll ask Zexion if he has any ideas. I should plan for some hours in isolated study here first, though."

The patter of Xemnas's inspiration is familiar, as is the pace. Fascination begins to pull the man away. He shows no hesitation now as he begins to wander down the corridor, eyes fixed upon the symbols dancing in the air to an endless orbit. It's a characteristic that Xemnas can't change despite the name and coat and pale complexion: if there's anything true and real that defines his existence, it's probably hidden in his ability to dream.

Watching him, Dilan isn't sure if he should pull the man back, or simply watch him go stray.

He settles for the first option. "We'll go back home," the lancer announces brusquely, ignoring what has become a standard procedure. "You can try opening a passage from scratch there. Normally I'd take you to Twilight, but I think you're done in here for now."

They cross the tunnel back without any difficulty, the Twilight portal folding closed automatically behind them, returning to an unformed blot of ink. Xemnas does not spare it a second glance, but he stops at the exit back to the City, carefully running his fingers over the air a span's width away from the entrance, as if he is afraid the darkness will leap out and bite off his fingers.

"There is so much power here," comes the whisper, "that a person could drown in it, and forget who they are. It's like the Darkness. I remember," the younger man adds offhandedly, quiet as a dove's wingbeat dying, "being lost in the Darkness once before. Right up until the end."

"This isn't like the Darkness, Xemnas." Dilan isn't sure why the distinction matters, but all his instincts itch at him, warning that the sooner they leave the tunnel, the better. He resists the urge to reach out and shove the other man along. "There are no Heartless to succumb to here. There's only us."

This observation brings a distant smile to Xemnas's face.

"You're right. In some ways, doesn't that make it worse?"

* * *

One day, the trails of five other Nobodies flicker, and go out.

Xaldin senses it first. He's in transit when it happens; even then, he only notices because he prefers to keep track of where everyone is. It helps for orientation when he's traveling. The beacon-lights of their lives shine when he's between worlds: Luxord over _there_, Saix nearby, and Xigbar leaving smokelines in the distance.

The signals aren't always easy to find, but Xaldin's had long years of experience hunting them out, so it's unsettling to discover that five points are gone beyond his best attempts to locate them.

If Zexion were there, he could ask the Schemer. Zexion's senses are the best of them all, but Number Six has gone to Castle Oblivion.

Even worse, his spark is also among the lost.

Xaldin hesitates in the tunnel between worlds. Summoned winds lick his cheek. He hesitates, and finally, picks a destination. The world he arrives on is sparse with Heartless, and he completes the scouting mission with little effort.

The five signals are still absent on his return trip.

He's not sure what went on until Axel stumbles back home with tales of betrayal and a Keyblade. Three of the original founding members dead, and two of the newer ones turned traitor. Namine is missing. The location of the Keyblade Master has been obfuscated. Castle Oblivion is in ruins.

Roxas, predictably, takes great interest when he hears the reports.

"You really want to tell him about the Keyblade?" Xaldin's voice is carefully neutral, but even he can't help the undertone of faint disbelief. Without Vexen and Zexion, there is no one remaining from the older members to advise the Superior, so the lancer reluctantly speaks up more often now.

Xemnas drums his fingers on the armrest of his chair, and then shrugs noncommittally. "I do. It will goad him to improve his own strength -- and to seek out his Other. Should Sora remain absent, it will be necessary to devise a means of locating him again. Roxas," he continues, as smooth and as ruthless as the undertow of the ocean in winter, "will become a tool for _that_ as well."

The next words come from across the room, Axel's direction. The Flurry of Dancing Flames leans forward in his chair. "I may be new at this kinda thing," he voices, casting a glance towards the door where Roxas had just marched out a handspan of minutes ago, "but if Roxas comes in contact with his heart, won't he be... subverted? Might be best to keep the two of them apart for now. _Way_ apart."

"Perhaps Roxas won't be the one to disappear." Xemnas's eyes are half-lidded, deceptively smug. "Maybe he'll be strong enough to prove what we have hoped for all along -- that the body can outmaster the heart. Either way, he will serve our purpose as the Key of Destiny."

Axel looks ready to argue, but no one is certain about Number Nine lately, and he knows it. The redhead slumps against his chair. When he catches Demyx looking at him quizzically, his mouth forms a dispirited smirk, and some of his confidence seems to come crawling back.

"Hey," the Flurry offers at last, waffling his hands through the air in languid flaps that somehow lack any ability to conceal the tension beneath. "Whatever you say. You're the boss, right?"

Xemnas's shrug, exaggerated, comes back in equal mockery of Axel's facade. "So glad to see you understand."

The meeting breaks up early. Roxas had already stalked out, citing the need to go check on his Samurai. Xemnas is the next to go; not bothering to walk, he simply pushes off his chair and vanishes. Xaldin is confident that no one will miss a third, so he makes his excuses early, and also slips out.

He finds the Superior on a balcony overlooking the north half of the castle. The man is muttering to himself, leaning hard on the railing; Xemnas's hair is a pale mantle on his shoulders, and it slithers across his jacket when he shakes his head irritably. "Of all things to have happen." No frustration stains the man's voice -- only a bare, bewildered question. "Why did people have to die _now?_"

Xaldin braces himself for any number of reactions as he steps closer -- Xemnas lashing out, or Dusks rising to block him. A giant Heartless frog popping up to swallow him whole. Violence to ward away any interruptions.

When nothing happens, he clears his throat.

"Do you want to spar, Xemnas?" Their matches occur at random, fierce each time; Xemnas is an untrained fighter, but makes up for it through sheer creativity, inventing and reinventing forms of attack. They leave bruises on each other whenever they clash, but the exertion is useful to keep in shape, and Xaldin hasn't had a good workout since the last world he helped destroy.

"No," Xemnas replies, a fierce whisper. He turns without looking, head lowered, hands reaching out to fist themselves in Xaldin's jacket. "I want to _win._"

They fuck like they fight: impersonally, without compassion. It's not even a proper bedding -- just a byplay of hands, fumbling knuckles, and an elbow jabbing into the other person's shoulder. Zippers snag on metal treads. Xemnas is as ruthless out of combat as in it; he builds feint upon prolonged feint, turning every loss of ground into another form of attack.

The first time is over almost as quickly as it begins. It's not hard to guess what Xemnas is after. Few people reach into Xaldin's pants for any reason other than the obvious, so by the time the Superior has Xaldin's jacket halfway open -- hip sliding against Xaldin's leg in heated promise -- the lancer decides it's just easier to let Xemnas do what he wants, within reason.

And that reason is a very small line. Xaldin growls when Xemnas's teeth worry at his ear; the other man draws back readily enough, his mouth set into a grim line while his fingers yank at buttons. Xaldin's only real concern is for the Dusks, and how they might interpret the act as assault. It's certainly violent enough. There is nothing of lust. The last thing he needs is to have them defend him against _Xemnas._

He doesn't touch Xemnas back, letting himself be pushed against the railing, keeping his hands latched on the carved marble. Both of them keep their gloves on. Xaldin's breath comes steadily through his nose, as practiced as if he were jogging laps, or a pre-combat warmup. Leather scrapes against his stomach.

He thinks about the Keyblade, about the dead -- and then about nothing at all, surrendering himself to thick waves of arousal without caring about the source.

Once it's over, Xemnas licks a smear of fluid off his thumb, and disappears back into the Castle.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time is accidental.

The second is a question of dominance.

Xaldin doesn't expect the lapse to occur again. He's so confident about this that he doesn't blink twice when Xemnas asks to speak to him about one of the scouted worlds; so confident that, in fact, he's still halfway expecting Xemnas to rattle off the coordinates even as his belt is being undone. This time, they're in the Superior's personal library, and the smell of books and wood resin is in Xaldin's nose as he leans against a shelf, feeling Xemnas's arm press against his hip, Xemnas's breath on the side of his neck.

He doesn't touch Xemnas back. Xemnas doesn't demand to be touched.

They end up on couches half the time, if they're lucky; on the floor for the rest, on tables and chairs and desks. It's always rough, impersonal. Their routine conversations go off-track again and again, as if each fresh encounter could somehow grant meaning to empty acts.

Xaldin lets it happen. The only inconvenience to the whole situation is having to wipe himself off and change his clothes, depending on how careless Xemnas was being at the time. If that's the worst penalty for what is, traditionally, an old-fashioned form of tension relief -- they may have lost their hearts, but their bodies still function off chemicals -- then so be it. Xemnas's temporary need to win is simple when translated to this. Together, they're a hollow imitation of lovers, using physical exhaustion to handle the mental distractions they're now faced with.

It helps Xaldin sleep better at night. He can only guess about the Superior.

Xaldin puts up with Xemnas's palm for only a few weeks before boredom kicks in; boredom, or simply a lingering distaste for being manhandled. It's too submissive of a position. The next time the discussion begins to slide -- Xemnas's words beginning to trail off, even as his eyes glance towards the doorway to make certain it's private -- Xaldin reacts first.

The expression in Xemnas's face when the lancer's fingers slide inside his pants is, Xaldin decides, more satisfying than that first time the Superior walked the tunnel between worlds.

The throaty groan that follows is even better.

There is rarely any prolonged contact. It's always a race to see who comes first, or who can make the other person buck and gasp while remaining coolly aloof. Xemnas is hungry for each small victory. Xaldin loses some of the time, mostly when he doesn't care enough to be the victor; then his pride fights back, and he leaves blood-bruises along both of Xemnas's tanned arms, livid marks that are readily concealed beneath black leather.

Neither of them wants to be dominated by the other. For that same reason, they keep to hands for stimulus instead of mouths, only undressing the bare minimum that it takes to prevent chafing. Xaldin doesn't care too much about the significance of their physical acts -- there _isn't_ one, no more than any rough play after classes back in the Bastion, or the occasional mutual hand job between Organization missions. Xaldin is far too jaded to attribute sentiment to biological functions. Most of them overcame their issues _years_ ago, along with puberty.

He wins. He loses. At some point they kiss; Xaldin remembers this because his lower lip starts becoming chapped from being bitten. Eventually, the lancer starts to counter Xemnas's urges well in advance, initiating their meetings himself -- not because he's embarrassed at the possibility of being caught in a public location, not enough heart left for _that_, but because he simply doesn't feel like explaining to the rest of the Organization why their Superior is breaching what little decorum they have.

They barely speak to each other about what they're doing. Xaldin knows he'd have nothing to say.

And that's how the tenuous balance holds, until one afternoon when Xaldin's busy grinning about how Xemnas came first, and how Xaldin has no plans of doing so. In fact, he's about to shove the Superior's hand aside and walk away -- a bit stiff-legged, but with a victory point to his name -- when Xemnas curses, swings his weight around, and slides Xaldin's cock into his mouth.

Xaldin gasps at the sudden heat wrapped around him, hot and wet as a woman. Physical instincts that have been carefully kept at a bare minimum suddenly kick into action, reminding the lancer of what life had been like before they'd been regulated to twelve males and a very antisocial female.

When he recovers, his fingers are clenched in Xemnas's hair.

"You were saying my name," the other man informs him smugly, wiping his hand across his chin.

Xaldin leans against the wall until he's certain he can walk without stumbling. In the shuddering tumble of his thoughts, all he can find running through his head is a question: _which one?_

He runs into Xigbar later that afternoon, still distracted enough that the gunner's in his face before Xaldin can react properly. Endorphins are burning lava trails along each of his nerves; a stir in his groin has been pestering him every time he thinks back on the encounter, wondering just how Xemnas has upped the ante this time.

Thankfully, Xigbar doesn't seem to notice. "How's he doing?"

For one terrible instant, Xaldin wonders if the gunner has been eavesdropping; then he realizes that there's nothing of crude implication in Xigbar's expression, only a sober curiosity. "What do you mean?"

"I _mean_," Xigbar replies, grimacing in mottled exasperation, "how is he doing about this whole mess. The, you know." One of the gunner's hands makes a vague swirling motion in the air. "The dead thing."

The day has been surreal enough that Xaldin doesn't understand why it sounds as if Xigbar is referring to someone entirely different than the Superior, someone who should be sunken-eyed with grief instead of wandering around creating Dusks. "He has no heart," the lancer points out dutifully, just in case Xigbar has had a severe lapse in memory. "How can he be troubled?"

"You _idiot,_ Dilan," Xigbar growls, and Xaldin guesses this means trouble, because the gunner rarely uses that old name. "It's his _mind_ we have to worry about. After losing his memory once," the other man continues bluntly, "getting convinced he was someone else, having his heart taken, and then losing almost all the people he's ever known, how much do you think he even remembers who he _is?_"

The fact that Xigbar has tallied up a list does not help to alleviate the lancer's growing sense of concern. Braig only used checksheets as proofs when he was pointing out some critical flaw in their physics classes; his Nobody has not changed from that habit. Xaldin finds himself arguing anyway. "And when did that ever matter before?"

"When he started having enough power to help destroy _worlds._"

The shape of the silence between them fills up the hallway.

Xigbar kills it first. "You and I are both used to death." Pacing several feet away, he summons one of his guns and flips it into the air. The dart-point blades catch the light as they spin. "We've had our whole lives to get used to it -- always knew it would happen with our grandparents, older aunts and uncles, ourselves. Your mother. Xemnas's only family was us and Radiant Garden. And how much exactly is that now?"

Xaldin can feel his mind shying away from the conclusions formed by the gunner's logic, but he answers anyway. "Nothing."

"Yeah," Xigbar emphasizes, his single yellow eye intense. "_Nothingness._"

The possibilities haunt the lancer's thoughts for the rest of the morning, nagging and harassing without pause. The ramifications of a second insane Ansem are not pleasant. There is only so much left for any of them to lose, and the Darkness has not been kind.

Distraction plagues him for the rest of the evening and chases him as soon as he's awake. Concentration is impossible. It's bad enough that Xaldin ends up missing breakfast while he takes his morning patrol twice around the Castle, and has to wander into the dining hall late, still toweling sweat off his neck from the exercise.

Seven discarded glasses litter the long table. One person left their silverware scattered across their plate; another stacked their dishes neatly for the Dusks to clean away. Further down the table waits a half-empty plate of sandwiches that someone has left out, and Xemnas.

The Superior blinks as he lowers his coffee cup.

Several broken dishes later and two chairs kicked across the floor, and Xaldin is methodically shaking sugar packets out of his waistband. It's unusual that the Superior is continuing to vent tension through this manner of physical activity -- normally, Xemnas would be off working on a new project by now, or engaging Zexion in another series of riddles -- so Xaldin decides he may as well inquire.

He offers the question with as much tact as he can manage without appearing particularly interested in the answer. "Are you still concerned about what happened at Castle Oblivion?"

The scornful look that Xemnas delivers is exactly what Xaldin imagines he had on his own face earlier. "How could I be? I lack any capacity for grief." Tanned fingers finish turning the sleeves of a shirt right-side out, and then Xemnas pulls his clothes back on in the right order. "If I had my heart back, maybe I could react appropriately," he continues, buttoning up his shirt while offering a faintly perplexed frown. "Right now, all it feels like is that it's strange that they're no longer alive."

Xaldin lowers the napkin he'd been using to clean off his fingers. "That's not uncommon," he reminds the man. "For those with hearts and those without."

"Yes," Xemnas concedes, "but if I ever get my heart, I wonder if I'll remember to miss them."

\- - - - -

They start to put the pieces back together eventually. The City that Never Was is stable, at least; the Dusk population was not lessened by the Keyblade Master's swath of destruction, and the Heartless are always making more. Despite the numerous threats that exist in the form of both Light and Darkness, the refuge of the Nobodies is -- for now -- untouched.

There is nothing to recover from Castle Oblivion, nothing save Namine, and she is missing.

Demyx, once overshadowed by the more confident members of the Organization, finds a niche in resuming Lexaeus's duties. He tends to the miniature ecosystems which the Silent Hero once shepherded: the moonlit seashore, the canyon of buildings and parking lots, Xemnas's aborted attempt at a miniature sun. The castle gardens which Marluxia had conquered are also included in Demyx's care. The musician hangs windchimes from the fruit trees; he brings music into every inch of his chosen domain, encouraging his Dancers to silent performances in the orchards. Xaldin cannot go outside without hearing sound. Gradually, he starts to expect it, and that makes it easier to forget there had ever been anything different.

Luxord takes up the job of deciphering Zexion's filing cabinets. He sorts through the combined resources of the Schemer and the Chilly Academic, applying the same cheerful practicality as if he were reading a pamphlet of rules from a gameboard.

Saix is even more protective than before; he disagrees more frequently with Axel, and has begun to linger around Xemnas's office until shooed away.

Xaldin doesn't know what to do about the fact that their resources have been cut. He was not as close to the other apprentices as Xemnas was -- all six of them had varying relationships with one another -- but that comparison is like claiming a river has less water than a lake. He can imagine what he'd do if Xigbar was slain; just as readily, he can scoff and say that will never happen.

No matter how hard he tries, Xaldin's mind refuses to grasp the _permanency_ of it all. Marluxia and Larxene never mattered to him that much; they joined the Organization and left it just as easily, keeping to their own privacies. Half of him keeps expecting to see Lexaeus patiently organizing trays of geological strata, or Zexion and Vexen arguing about theory as they stride down the halls, sniping at each other over everything and nothing at all.

It's as if, by lacking a heart, Xaldin is also unable to grasp the concept of eternity so long as it would be inexorably linked to sorrow. He can watch the annihilation of worlds. He knows that Marluxia is destroyed, that Larxene is gone. But his thoughts continue to skirt around the idea of the other apprentices forever dead, as if whatever's left of his emotions cannot conjure the reaction it thinks he should have, so it doesn't even try.

He's not alone. As far as he can tell, Xemnas adjusts to the loss with an even higher degree of indifference, as though lacking the companions of his past only severs him more effectively from the present. The extent of the Superior's public mourning is to skip breakfasts more frequently; Xaldin cannot say how much of what they do in private is a form of inverse sorrow, or simply a means of working off pent-up energy.

For all the lancer knows -- and doesn't want to think about -- his body might simply be a replacement for someone else's, and Xemnas's bad habits are not new at all.

Ironically, there aren't many places to go for privacy when a hundred worlds are available for perusal. Xaldin can travel to another country, but his Dusks will always be in attendance, and the extra insurance they provide is necessary these days. If he stays inside the Castle That Never Was, Xemnas can find him anywhere; offworld to another realm, and the other Organization members can track the lancer as surely as he once searched them out.

It's the middle ground that the lancer ends up choosing. He escapes from the cool sterile hallways and wanders along the outer terraces, gradually slipping from one level of the Castle to another. The skies are thick with rain. Music draws him closer to an archway, and then Xaldin catches a glimpse of where he's ended up this time.

Ever since Marluxia claimed the gardens, Xaldin hasn't been down to visit any of them. He's not sure how much of what he sees is the Graceful Assassin's work; there are small pools of water, there are graceful curves of earth, and the whole setup of flat marble walkways between slabs of grass seems like something Lexaeus would choose.

Sitting on the rim of a fountain in the middle of the garden is Demyx. A few of his Dancers gambol on the lawn at the far edge, gyrating their bodies to a rhythm that does not match up with anything Xaldin can hear. Demyx himself seems willing to ignore them, occupied in patiently combining a variety of wailing notes together, pulling music carefully out of the air and his own instinct.

They catch sight of each other at the same time. Demyx's fingers do not slip. The younger Nobody only offers a faint smile over the neck of the sitar as he continues to chain melody after melody, and Xaldin wonders briefly if any of the songs mean anything.

"Why," he can't help asking, "is there a stream running through the Castle?"

_How_ is a better word, but the engineering is simple enough once Xaldin actually studies it. Magic must be involved; there are no mechanical pumps lining the trenches to keep a steady current going, and there is not enough infrastructure to encourage a natural flow. _How_ is a technical term, and technically solved. _Why_ is not.

The question elicits another smile from the Nocturne, but this one is wry. "I thought Lexaeus might like it." His head turns to follow Xaldin as the lancer kneels down by the edge of one narrow channel and dabbles his fingers in the water. "I thought it would be the kind of thing he'd enjoy."

There are so many things wrong with those two statements that Xaldin stops dead in his investigation, struck dumb by contractions and the sheer weariness of ennui. "Maybe," he ends up shrugging. "Why are you bothering?"

Strings twang. Demyx's fingers move along the swollen body of the sitar, caressing the lacquered wood. "If you leave behind no body and no heart, then all that's left are memories." Frowning to himself at the sound of the notes, the man deftly fiddles with the neck of the instrument, tightening one rounded peg first, then loosening another higher up. "Without other people remembering you, did you even exist?"

The answer is predictably poetic. Xaldin finds himself staring anyway. The lancer had never shared in the same love of tangential philosophy that Lexaeus had favored -- and, apparently, musicians as well. He hadn't expected Demyx to be so inclined. A side-effect of pursuing the arts as a hobby, perhaps, just as hatters go mad from mercury.

"Memory is no proof of existence," he can't help but stress. He's seen too much of his life altered by lack of memory and false histories to believe in permanence.

"I know," the Nocturne sighs. His hands call forth another series of wan notes. "Xemnas destroyed the doors."

Even for a musician, the nonsequitur is strange; Xaldin might be the only sane one in the Castle at this rate of decay. Then the realization strikes.

"The doors?" he repeats weakly, but he doesn't need to wait to hear the answer to his suspicions.

Darkness takes him before he has even finished standing up. It folds the space around his body and drags him from _here_ to _there_, quickly enough that the rush of power hits like a blast of winter air, and then he's out.

There is one room in the Castle which has always functioned as a nexus. It was occasionally called a main hall -- even though the Castle has at least five, all of which are used -- due to the fact that it was designed to provide an access point to each Organization member's personal quarters. Bedrooms, libraries, observatories; the doors are linked for mutual convenience, triggered to warn whoever's inside that they're about to have a visitor.

Xaldin has had reason to be grateful for the alert system more than once. Without the locks and lights, he would have had to answer many more questions about his personal life. Last time, it had been Roxas shuffling up to Xemnas's quarters, asking for clarification on some mission or the other. The time before that, Xaldin had just enough time to look for his pants and dignity before Luxord walked in, delivering a report on the Land of Dragons along with take-out.

But the lancer rarely has any need to use the nexus himself. Xemnas visits enough that Xaldin feels little hesitation in appearing directly inside the Superior's room without bothering to sending an alert, and the lancer has known Xigbar long enough that there is little in the way of privacy between either of them.

What he remembers of the hallway involved normal doors. Six to a side, with a solitary exit cresting the top of the stairs; Xemnas had left his gateway at the far end of the room, isolated and alone. _For convenience,_ the man had shrugged when Xaldin asked. _That way, no one can get confused looking for someone they thought was me._

Now the room resembles a burial chamber. The doors have been stripped off the walls and stacked neatly along the stairways, forming row after row of engraved weapons and names. Five of the portals no longer hum. Some of them have been defaced, smashed. Their purposes are empty now; their owners are no longer alive to be warned.

Where Xemnas's door would have been is nothing.

The lancer does not bother to send a Dusk. "Xemnas!"

When the Superior appears, he does so with an air of polite curiosity. One eyebrow is crooked; the man's nose is wrinkled in confusion. The expression might be comical, if it wasn't for the way it does not change even when surrounded by destruction.

"Yes?"

It's impossible for Xaldin's voice to reach all the rooms of the Castle, particularly when there are so many walls involved; he does not know if the Superior was deliberately listening in, or if the man's powers have ascended yet another degree. Either answer is dangerous. "What did you do here?"

Xemnas runs a slow glance over the room. "Nothing." The word could mean anything at all, and they both know it; when the Superior's eyes settle back on Xaldin, there's a smirk in their gold-laced depths. "It was like this when I got here."

Five ways to accuse the man of lying flicker through Xaldin's mind. Rather than attempt any of them, he only scans the room again, seeing broken stone where connected doors had once been. Breaking the links is not truly a matter of destruction -- anyone can still use Darkness to travel directly to those rooms -- but now that the doors have been rearranged, have been _ruined_, it is impossible to escape the symbolism.

Xaldin is standing in a graveyard for those with no bodies to bury.

He can't help it.

He looks for his own symbol.

Xemnas follows him, trotting down the stairs until he's at the lancer's elbow, peering over his shoulder. His laugh is almost breathless. "What is wrong with you?"

When Xaldin turns, there must have been something in his face, because the Superior's false amusement ebbs away. He gives a slight, miniscule shake of his head, barely perceptible. "Xaldin." The word is soft, so soft it might have been a warning. "It happened without my control."

"I refuse to believe that." Winds roar inside Xaldin's chest, inside his throat and eyes. He does not like what he is seeing; even if _like_ is the wrong word for it, the lancer knows he does not support the change in the nexus hall, no more than he trusts the way that Xemnas has started to behave since the destruction of Castle Oblivion. "You should have more control than this."

The challenge is met and devoured by Xemnas's mouth, which spreads wide in arrogant promise. "Try me."

Xaldin gives a warning shove -- he doesn't roll over easily. Even though he allows Xemnas to control their encounters, he never lies down meekly, like a tame boy waiting to be taken. Submission is a farce. Neither one of them masters the other in bed, and doing so wouldn't matter anyway. There are more satisfying methods for power plays -- more satisfying and _relevant_, considering the shaken hierarchy. Authority in the Organization comes from ability, not from who's in which bed each night.

Which is for the best, considering that Xaldin isn't sure what that would make his standing now.

Xemnas's boots slide back easily along the marbled floor as Xaldin grabs the Superior's jacket to keep him in place. Tanned fingers slide along the lancer's arm. They trace along the leather, deftly finding the place where sleeve and glove part to reveal the soft patch of skin on the underside of Xaldin's wrist. Turning his chin, Xemnas laps his tongue against the pulse.

Xaldin barks a laugh, and then lashes out in a hard shove.

The back of Xemnas's heel hits the stairs; he goes down in a flurry of limbs, catching himself in a sprawl of elbow and hip. His jacket spreads across the ground like a half-frozen ink puddle. But nothing about the Superior's face changes: his gaze does not leave Xaldin's, and his teeth are still grinning.

Xaldin follows him down. He doesn't know what possesses him to do it. Maybe it's frustration with the latest assignment, or the way he has the sneaking suspicion that Xemnas is getting complacent about his cock being in Xaldin's mouth, because the last time the lancer glanced up in the middle of the act, he caught Xemnas _reading._

Today, Xemnas is content to simply look up at the ceiling as Xaldin unzips his jacket, crouching between the Superior's legs. His eyes are unfocused, limbs relaxed. Xaldin catches the occasional glimpse as he alternates between mouth and hand; he normally doesn't care enough to spend more effort arousing the other man, and Xemnas doesn't care enough to _be_ particularly aroused.

Xaldin is half-hard inside his pants; it's awkward to get comfortable. He already knows that once he's done with Xemnas, the other man will lean down, fish open the buttons, and finish the lancer off with a few quick strokes. It's the usual procedure between them. Neither one will react, and Xemnas will laugh a little as he comes, with that rich half-wondering, half-helpless noise that always leave Xaldin wondering if the other man felt anything at all.

_Not today_, he decides, and works his hand down until he can feel the flexing of muscle against his fingertips. He traces the opening once -- no other warning given -- and then presses one finger in.

At the intrusion, Xemnas goes completely still.

Xaldin's not stupid. He knows how to crook his finger, how to pull gently down until Xemnas draws in a breath, hissing. Tension shifts. Xemnas's muscles make tiny clenches around the lancer's knuckles, and Xaldin tries not to pay attention to the name imprinting itself in reverse-block letters on his left palm, or the fact that his foot is shoved against Vexen's shattered placard.

He waits until Xemnas has managed to relax before he promptly does it again.

The strangled noise that Xemnas makes is enough to urge Xaldin to sit back on his heels, spit cooling on his chin as he watches the Superior shudder on the floor. The room is cold, but the flash of triumph in Xaldin's thoughts is warm as summer honey, and he's satisfied by the combination of resistance and surrender that Xemnas's body is enduring underneath the lancer's hand.

Xemnas's eyes refocus long enough to notice Xaldin watching him.

"I should kill you," he grits out, "for the audacity."

Xaldin won't point out the obvious -- that Xemnas _won't_ \-- so instead he leans forward and bites down hard on the other man's shoulder.


	3. Chapter 3

Xemnas is calm the next week, calm enough that it's strange to see him depleted of artificial restlessness. He is as serene as when they first began to establish the Organization. His private thoughts are kept neatly behind his eyes, and inside a wide, smooth smile. He does not pressure Xaldin whenever the two of them are alone now; in fact, his neutrality is so consistent that the lancer has to wonder if somehow the Superior has been switched out, replaced by one of Vexen's experimental replicant-Dusks.

Reports trickle in. Armies are plotted. The mountain of paperwork that has built up on Zexion's old desk is neatly reassigned to Luxord; even though the Schemer is gone, the notecards, evaluations, and cost receipts keep adding up. Luxord accepts the additional duties without blinking. His penmanship is remarkably neat, constructed with block printing and tiny letters -- the kind of script that distracts with its _plainness_ until the reader notices they've just signed away their fortune.

Roxas is edgy; the newest Nobody could even be _angry_, if that was an emotion generally believed possible among them. As far as any of them can tell, Marluxia's plans have not spread to other worlds. There are no offshoots of vengeance lying in wait to bloom with lethal cunning. If Namine is on the move, then she does so with protection. No Dusks have been able to track her down yet.

Xaldin cannot find her despite his best efforts. She and the Key of Destiny have always been more difficult for him to pick up, and he no longer has the option of Zexion to consult. Little by little, familiar faces have begun to drift away: this he knows, and yet none of it feels as if it is truly _real_ enough to matter yet.

Xaldin does not go back to the room of doors -- the _Proof of Existence_, as Demyx has started to call it. The nickname has stuck; everyone calls the room that now, and avoids using it unless absolutely necessary. Xaldin wanders the hallways each afternoon in a daze before he notices that he is unconsciously expecting Xemnas to show up. When the realization strikes, he sits purposefully alone on the balcony nearest to the libraries -- but no one comes, and the hours tick by without interruption.

He doesn't know why Xemnas started to seek him out. Now he's not sure why it ended.

The next day, the Superior is in the middle of an extended group lecture about the importance of heart containment fields when he pauses abruptly, falling silent halfway through a sentence. The pen slides out of his hand. Then the man's eyes begin to roll up, head tilting back as his muscles slowly give out in a graceless collapse.

Axel sits upright with a tell-tale blink, the kind that reveals that the Flurry has been dazing off with his eyes open during the discussion. His mouth opens. Suspicion is already coloring the tilt of his jaw: suspicion, and a heightened sense of opportunity.

Xaldin is quick to react. He's on his feet before anyone has a chance to question for details, grabbing brusquely at Xemnas's arm. Xemnas's weight feels lighter than he expected. He shoulders the man aside into a hastily-opened portal, shoving Xemnas through first.

"Darkness," he explains roughly, using the first calamity that comes to mind. _Darkness_ is a peril they're all familiar with; he could blame it for the weather, for a missing shoelace, for Saix's awful disposition.

Luxord is tactful enough to accept this excuse and reinforce it. "The Darkness _can_ be rather distracting," he agrees smoothly, gathering up his reports. He stands with a flourish; the motion drags the group's attention back towards him as effectively as any showman. "Why, in fact, I found it bothering my maps just the other day. Can you _imagine?_"

Xaldin doesn't waste the opportunity to escape. He makes a mental note to thank the Gambler later; then he's through the portal himself, catching up Xemnas's prone body with the help of his winds, and gracelessly dragging the other man along to the exit on the far side.

The Superior sleeps for just under five hours, all of which are spent face-down on Xaldin's couch. The man's jacket unzips easily, turning into an impromptu blanket across his body. He looks smaller when removed from his black leather shell; his muscles have become lean without Xaldin's notice, packed tight against their bones.

Xaldin spends the time counting the tiles in his ceiling, backwards and forwards until the figures blend together and refuse to match up. When that happens, he resorts to methodically cleaning his spears. None of them actually require maintenance, but the habit is an old one, and for a little while, he can pretend that they and he are both back in a simpler world.

It's evening before the Superior wakes. There's no change in the sky overhead, but the castle lights have begun to dim, and Xaldin can smell the distant odor of dinner being prepared. On the bedside table, the lone clock has wound its hours down to night. It's Demyx's turn for patrol.

Oil smudges itself against his fingers as he wipes down the jagged teeth of one blade, and then Xaldin glances up to find the Superior silently watching.

The lancer offers no explanation, settling back against a couchleg with a shrug. The wooden frame bites into his spine. Xemnas's eye is a spot of ivory and fire, and the rest of his face is obscured.

They sit together like that for a while, before Xemnas finally offers the first words.

"I wasn't going to come back."

"To me?" Xaldin doesn't wait for a reply. He flips the shaft of the spear over, examining it for nonexistent cracks. "Don't answer that. What's _wrong_ with you? Why did you pass out?"

To his credit, Xemnas does not appear disoriented by his relocation from the meeting hall to a bedroom; he only gives a loose shrug, shifting a shoulder on the couch. "The Dusks are getting stronger." It's a soft admission and Xaldin wonders, privately, why there's any need to treat such a fact with caution. The Dusks are getting stronger. The sky looks like rain. All common sense, and easily predictable.

Just when he's about to question Xemnas's priorities, the Superior adds another deceptively mild line: "Soon, they will advance to even more sophisticated shapes. The more worlds that are claimed, the more Heartless and Nobodies are created. As long as we retain our strength, we will gain even further mastery of both. They will become giants, Xaldin. And they will be obedient to us."

Xaldin does not acknowledge the words at first, pretending to be deeply involved with a tiny divot in the handle of one of the spears. Finally, when the pretense is long overdue, he speaks. "How can you tell?"

"How can you _not_?" By all accounts, the question should be scornful, but Xemnas only sounds weary. "Every time I look at them, I see new forms they can take. There are endless possibilities waiting. All we have to do is reach out, and make it happen."

"Xemnas."

The younger man pushes himself upright on his arms, swaying faintly. There's a crease-line on his cheek from the cushions. "You're not pleased?"

"Xemnas --"

"Of course not," the Superior snaps out before the sentance is finished, rolling his eyes as he leans back against the couch. "No ability to _become_ pleased, entirely absurd to consider. My mistake. I forgot."

Screwing up his face in a grimace, Xaldin ignores the man's distracted ramble. "According to Luxord's reports, Xemnas, your Heartless thought he was a Seeker of Darkness. Don't make the same mistake. You're every inch as mortal as the rest of us -- and the Nothingness isn't making the same demands."

The younger researcher offers no argument back. He props his arm up on the back of the couch, turning his face to the wall. Between pale hair and the curve of the couch, it's impossible for the lancer to see what expression Xemnas is wearing now, and he is unable to determine what the Superior means when the man extends out his hand in a silent beckoning, palm-down.

Curious, Xaldin only waits to see if the room will explode in flames. Then, when nothing detonates, he sets down the spear to lean closer -- but Xemnas only drops his arm limply, fingertips curled against the cushions.

At first, the lancer wonders if there's some meaning in the action. Then he sees that Xemnas's breathing has steadied out, back into sleep.

After a while of kneeling there, Xaldin shrugs back to the ground, returning to his vigil by the couch. The edge of the cushions feel warm where he's been leaning. His shoulder bumps against Xemnas's leg.

He pretends to ignore it.

* * *

They stay in Xaldin's room that night. The couch is not wide enough for them both; the bed is the only place where two bodies can fit comfortably in Xaldin's room without having to contort themselves, and as satisfying as the thought might be to squash the Superior into the cushions, Xaldin refrains. Sleeping on the floor does not rank among the sacrifices that Xaldin is willing to make for the Organization, and he doesn't relish the thought of leaving the other man more than five feet away right now.

Xemnas does not complain when he is relocated from the couch to the bed. He is conscious enough to crawl underneath the sheets when Xaldin dumps the man onto the mattress, but he does not open his eyes when his name is called, and Xaldin stops trying.

Hunger prevents him from the same drowse that's claimed the Superior. Leaving the room would be tempting fate to come in and destroy it when he's not looking -- attracted to Xemnas as surely as a lodestone to a cannonball -- so instead Xaldin summons a Dusk to fetch scraps from the kitchen. His Dragoons do not have the best sense for food; their tastes run towards simpler foods whenever he asks them to scavenge from various worlds, and inevitably they return with fruit-loaves and noodles in styrofoam cups.

Today, they've pulled leftovers out of one of the refrigerators. Xaldin's Dragoons are nothing if not conscientious, even if they have no taste buds; one of them remembered to heat the plate up. The creatures brought back an assortment for dinner: slices of banana bread pressed up against some kind of ground meat that's been baked with a layer of crumbs. Examining the meat, Xaldin tries to remember whose turn it was to actually prepare dinner -- Axel's -- and then, just as quickly, debates the merits of going vegetarian.

Only when dinner arrives does the Superior wake up. Rather than eat right away, the darker-skinned man only stumbles groggily for the bathroom, turning the shower high enough that steam curls underneath the door. When he comes back, his muscles are loose and slack from the hot water; he ambles along like a sleepy puppet whose master is lax at the strings.

"Those are my pants," Xaldin observes with mild reproach.

Xemnas glances down long enough to verify the accuracy of the claim, and then shrugs. "They're a little short."

"I wonder _why._"

"Don't complain." Flopping down on the ground beside the plate, Xemnas picks idly at the contents. Xaldin hadn't wanted to leave crumbs on the bed, so eating on the floor was the next best option; he's satisfied with his choice when he sees Xemnas knock a chunk of banana bread onto the carpet. Around a mouthful, the Superior asks, "Are you certain your elemental attunements should align so easily to wind?"

The question is familiar, if ancient. Xaldin last heard it in the Bastion. In truth, he had only learned to master control of the air as a matter of convenience; wind had been a necessary part of location in a kingdom with suspension lifts and hover-platforms, and Xaldin has always been a practical man. Wind is only another form of air, with kinetic and potential energies, and the ability to keep yourself from falling three flights off the balcony. It does what it wants without being directly perceived, and Xaldin has always liked that too.

"What do you mean?" he parries back, more curious with how coherent the other man sounds. It's an improvement.

"Some would call it chaotic. Wild, untamed." Licking the side of his hand, Xemnas reaches down and fishes out another nugget of fried meat. "But you're nothing like that. It makes me wonder, sometimes."

"Wind is only harsh to whatever stands in its way. That which allows itself to be drawn along by that force will not become damaged. If you don't resist a wind," Xaldin continues softly, "I won't hurt you."

"It, you mean," Xemnas corrects. "_It_ won't hurt you."

The lancer only shrugs, unwilling to admit to the slip. "Wind is simple, Xemnas. What you play with -- Darkness, Nothingness -- is not. A fire may burn you, but it is still part of the traditional elemental set. Didn't you _study_?" he tacks on with half-hearted scorn, feeling the ghosts of old classes resurrecting themselves through his tongue.

Abandoning the argument, Xemnas only shakes his head, kicking out his legs so that they form a sloppy angle on the carpet. "I wish we could have salvaged Oblivion."

"Does it bother you that Marluxia destroyed so much?" The question is formed without much interest. The breadcrumbs on the meatloaf taste oddly of sourdough, and Xaldin finds himself dreading the next time it's Axel's turn to cook.

"Naturally," is the answer, and if this contradicts anything that Xemnas has claimed before, he doesn't admit it. "I don't like anything ending before I choose it to. Things should only be allowed to die when _I_ say so."

At first Xaldin finds himself smirking, but when Xemnas doesn't follow up that arrogant declaration with something properly ironic, he sobers. "You're serious."

The Superior rolls onto his back, scrubbing his face with his palms. In the half-light of the bedroom, his fingers look like the pinfeathers of a bird descending, wings splayed and injured. "Maybe. It doesn't matter." When he lowers his hands, they reveal eyes that are staring distantly towards the ceiling, caught up in whatever new plan has trapped the man now. "When I seize Kingdom Hearts," he promises aloud, "this will all end. I will make it stop."

The meatloaf is sticking in Xaldin's throat. "Is that what you want badly enough to ruin yourself for it?"

Xemnas's glance is a quicksilver thing, there and gone in an instant. "I don't," and the pause is long enough to cause suspicion in the lancer, "_want_ anything."

"No." Xaldin's words are slow, dressed in the same impassive patience that he uses for crazed animals, or Xigbar whenever the gunner is holding something explosive. "You _need_ something, though. That's why you've been acting so strange. What is it?"

Resistance lasts for all of two seconds. Then Xemnas's mouth twists at the corner, impossibly proud, impossibly bitter. "Power," he whispers at last, sliding away from the dinner plate, away from Xaldin's hands, like a tide of amber escaping the shore.

He heads directly for the window balcony, wadding the curtains in his fist like so much cocoon gauze. Energy crackles in a negative halo in the air. Barbed-wire lines of force birth themselves from the shadows pooled around him. Xemnas depresses the latch; the twin doors drift apart and leave the Superior standing there as the night winds pick up, drawn towards the opening.

Outside, the clouds are in full storm. The rainy season has come to the City, meaning that it's an even-numbered month, or simply an even-numbered _week._ Their weather is predictable in one way only: it rains almost constantly, as if to remind them desperately not to forget it.

Xaldin knows the view of the City is unrivaled by any other height in the Castle -- that's why he chose this side of the towers, for the vantage point that shows half the streets laid out like so many straight lines -- but he can also see that Xemnas isn't bothering to look down. Instead, the Superior's head is tilted back, towards a sky that's pregnant with an artificial moon and its attendant stars. From what Xaldin can tell, Kingdom Hearts is obscured behind the heavy layer of clouds tonight, so he props himself up against the bed with an elbow, and asks:

"What are you looking for?"

At first, there's only silence, so he repeats the question.

"Nothing." Wind licks the curtains and carries Xemnas's voice with it. "I'm looking at all that _nothing._"

At his words, vines begin to twine themselves along the white marble of the balcony, sprouting from thin air like the dreams of a crazed painter. At first, Xaldin wonders if it's Marluxia's influence finally surfacing in some kind of trap; then he sees the familiar bristle of Dusk-thorns beginning to sprout.

Xaldin isn't too keen on the idea of Nobodies being summoned in his bedroom. He likes the idea of Heartless even less, and this isn't the first time that he's seen the Superior's power build until both forms of creatures become attracted to him like countless moths finding a black flame. "Xemnas," he orders, and then tempers his words to gentleness. "Come to bed. Lie down. Let's sleep."

The suggestion glides right past the Superior, but the stern timbre of Xaldin's voice does not, and Xemnas turns away just enough from the doors that his profile is framed in white from the lights outside. Waves of mist roll through the City's streets, mimicking ocean currents that sway in eternal, peaceful rhythm. They are underwater; they are breathing nothing. "Your winds," Xemnas says again, picking up the previous threads in their conversation as if they had never left. "Aren't you ever worried you'll be swallowed up by them and dragged away?"

Answers come instantly to the lancer; he pauses, and counts the weight of them out until one sits right in his head. "No." He says the word with as much persuasion as he can summon. "It's something my mother taught me. All humans have a natural safeguard against getting caught up in their magic, just like pulling back from a hot stove. We can learn to ignore it," he adds, feeling awkward about the obvious, common-sense laws that everyone in the Bastion knew since childhood, ones that never needed to be taught, "but the reflex is there."

"A natural safeguard," Xemnas repeats back blankly, and then, "I don't. I can't. I've always had that problem with Darkness. Then we came here, and I was so sure I'd be able to resist the lure of any power like that again." His hands lift, tracing along the curtains; dark blots have begun to form on the edges closest to the windows, remnants of the drizzle of rain making its way across the balcony. "But something's gone wrong, and I don't understand. I don't understand why it's... harder now. I keep looking for... things."

Xaldin isn't sure what to say to all of this -- he's never been the type of person who's big on verbal reassurance, and nothing Xemnas is saying is particularly much of a _surprise._ All of Ansem's students had endured Xehanort's confusion, and his absolute lack of understanding when it came to basic principles.

He resorts to the next best thing: distraction.

The floor is cold underneath his feet. His skin winces at the change in temperatures as he nears the glass doors -- the moisture hanging on the air wicks the heat right out of his body, out of the City itself. It leaves a layer of slick dew on the streets, and goosebumps to lift the hair on Xaldin's arms.

From what he can tell -- as he gets closer, creeping up behind the Superior like an overlarge cat -- Xemnas isn't even shivering.

The darker-skinned man does say one thing as Xaldin bridges the gap between them, skin meeting skin and finding a confusion of temperatures there. "If I lose my memory a second time, where do you think I'll wake up?"

A crueler man would say the truth. A crueler man would say, _you've already lost it_, but Xaldin reserves those kinds of efforts for the numerous victims he convinces to sacrifice themselves to the Darkness. There is a time and place for such strategy. This is not one of them.

Xemnas accepts the unspoken request to brace himself against the side of the doorframe, turning over easily so that his back is against the wall. His feet spread. His face holds warring interests: the artificial drowsiness that comes from entrancement, and a cooler indifference that refuses to be hypnotized by its own power.

Xaldin traces his hands down the expanse of the other man's stomach, past Xemnas's groin, and then low enough that the lancer has to crouch, reaching around one leg to help steady himself into position while he tugs down the stolen pair of pants. As he does, Xemnas makes this little noise, like he's _surprised_, and that's something that's always made Xaldin wonder: how the Superior can be so cunning and so naiive at the same time, utterly in control and out of it at the same time.

More accurately, Xaldin suspects he already _knows_ why.

It's just easier to pretend that he doesn't.

Two knuckles deep is no time to be squeamish; one finger only to start, testing the difference in angle when they're both upright. It's not a position Xaldin's experienced in, but the loss of his heart makes everything else normal by comparison, and he never cared particularly much for propriety to begin with. He knows the principle of working any muscle until it allows itself to relax under gentle pressure, calming something that's hot and tense and scared.

The most important thing, he knows, is to remember that a man is like a woman and _not_ at the same time, largely concerning one key factor: without natural lubrication, Xaldin is _definitely_ going to tear something if he goes too much further.

Spit barely suffices for more than a minute. Sending out a Dusk is tacky. He doesn't know if it'd bring back the right thing, either.

So there's no easy way to keep his fingers as slick as he'd prefer, but he doesn't have to do too much before Xemnas is rocking back against him, slow and steady, like neither of them have anywhere they have to be in the next century. Two fingers in now with his thumb hard just outside the rim, applying pressure inside and out. The pad of his thumb rolls in a slow circle, hitting nerves that Xaldin _knows_ are there, the ones that make Xemnas mumble and toss his head, bumping it gently against the wall.

It's not entirely easy to coordinate the vertical motions of his mouth and his hand, but Xaldin finds a good rhythm soon enough, bracing his weight as he settles back on his heels. The muscles of his thighs complain against the position; his neck threatens a crick. Xemnas has just started to relax again, the man's breathing easing off from its shallow gasps into something deeper, a meditative pulse that detaches itself from physical sensation and refuses to be broken.

And Xaldin slips that third finger in and _twists._

Xemnas comes in a hard roll of his hips off the wall, fingers knotting in the curtains. He tastes bitter on Xaldin's tongue. The muscles of his body give a tight shudder, clenching down despite themselves, and Xaldin's reward is a cry that sounds like dying.

When it's over, something's gone out of Xemnas's face -- traces of that dangerous inhumanity that the Superior has been wearing as frequently as his black work coat, until both have become a second skin. The emptiness leaves Xemnas utterly calm, abandoned by ravenous energy. It leaves him vulnerable, strips away his resistence; for one horrible second, Xaldin can't shake the feeling that he could do _anything_ right now, and it would be tolerated.

The man is pliant when Xaldin crawls out from between his legs, all butter-soft and tensionless. He doesn't protest when he's half-carried, half-pulled back to the bed, and Xaldin knows that if he wanted to -- _really_ wanted right now -- he could have Xemnas the rest of the way. Take him completely. Dominate the other man for as long as he feels like. It wouldn't take much work. Blood is inevitable, but he could apologize later.

Judging by the glassy awareness in Xemnas's eyes, he knows it too.

But Xaldin only angles Xemnas's knees towards one side of the bed, and scoots up until he can lie down properly, tucking himself behind the other man's back. His own erection sends a tiny jolt through his groin when he accidentally brushes it against Xemnas's thigh, but he grits his teeth and ignores it.

The aborted groan draws Xemnas's attention again. His hand wanders back, hunting along the landscape of their legs, but Xaldin catches it in a warning grip before it gets too close.

"Are you sure?" Xemnas asks. It's the first time he's ever really shown interest or concern in Xaldin's sexual frustrations, in a way other than trying to encourage them.

Xaldin might almost find it touching, if it wasn't for the fact that he technically lacks that sentiment now.

"Go to sleep," he says instead, shifting until Xemnas's shoulder is pressed against his chin. Both their bodies are sticky with the other's sweat. And then, because he's feeling generous, "It can be your turn in the morning."

* * *

There is one advantage to their periodic couplings: at breakfast one morning, Saix looks up suddenly at Xaldin, and _growls_.

* * *

The balance of the Organization gradually shifts, filling in the gaps left behind from five deaths. Xemnas talks to Luxord more frequently about offensive strategies, along with mission briefings. Lacking Zexion to plot the movements of the uncontrolled Heartless, the Superior turns to the next best strategist in line; Luxord's plans are less subtle than the Schemer's, relying on charm rather than illusion to see their fruition, but his effectiveness does not fall short. The plans of the Organization do not become conservative overnight, but the mistake of Oblivion is not repeated, and talk of fresh recruitment is almost completely absent.

The more days pass by, the more Xaldin realizes that he's seeing through the Superior's behavior in a different way now. Instead of noticing Xehanort's old stubbornness when it came to research, to dreams, he's finding an even younger man reflected in Xemnas's face. Time is moving full-circle; Xemnas's confidence is becoming strange as he reorients himself to the fresh holes in his life.

It's not only Xemnas who is affected. They're all returning to their origins. They're all falling prey to the same flaws of their former lives. Xaldin finds himself prone to even larger bouts of chronic disinterest, and each time, he remembers a taste of home. Xigbar displays a renewed capacity for mockery. Xaldin isn't familiar with any of the other Organization members before the loss of their hearts, but even Axel seems changed since his time in Castle Oblivion: the Flurry's behavior has become disturbingly hyper-dependent, lingering by Roxas's side whenever it is appropriate, and quite often when it is not. They're all reverting, all finding new points of orientation, and in doing so, they're dredging up scraps from their past to rely on.

Xaldin doesn't forsee any difficulties from his own bad habits cropping up again; what little he remembers of Dilan's vices primarily involved a heavy dose of reclusiveness. Braig was similarly reasonable, if annoying. But the dangerous thing about Xehanort was that _his_ traits led to self-destruction. His curiosity drew him irrevocably towards the Darkness; his inability to resist power left him overwhelmed. Xemnas is his heart's twin. Like a genetic predisposition towards cancer, the younger sibling carries a similar risk for disease, and Xemnas is in the same position to lead them all down the same doomed path again.

Unless they're careful.

In every visionary, there must be something to root them to the ground. That's what makes them so brilliant, and so dangerous. The five students of Ansem the Wise made that mistake with Xehanort, encouraging him to become more and more abstract, to detach himself from what little remained of his memory in order to assume a new one. After losing their hearts as the price, they had become more careful with his Nobody -- but things had changed when the Organization had expanded, and it had been too easy to forget.

Only time will show if the same destiny can happen to the Nobody left behind.

Six students of Ansem the Wise in total; three alive now. They didn't always get along, but neither could they escape from one another. In Xaldin's mind, all six remain. Himself. Xemnas. Vexen, Zexion, Lexaeus. Xigbar. Death makes no difference. He simply cannot _find_ the victims of Castle Oblivion in his thoughts, in his logic, and that makes their absence unreal.

When he thinks about this, he wonders, too, what it must be like to have nothing there to remember at all. He has never endured amnesia. He does not know what would be left if he forgot even his name; he may be divorced from his heart, but his memories are his own.

The Organization changes. The individuals within the Organization change. Whatever is between himself and Xemnas -- sex, fucking, boredom, whichever word fits best -- also begins to shift. They spend more time doing nothing in particular together, unwinding after patrol duty, or discussing random trivia to fill up the empty space. It's a gradual normality, and it's not entirely unwelcome.

Eventually, Xaldin realizes why Xemnas is coming to him instead of finding his peculiar form of stress relief with the gunner. Because Xaldin is stable, he is the safest vent for Xemnas's energy. Xigbar would joke and cajole and try to make things better through humor; Xaldin barely talks about things he doesn't like, which means that Xemnas doesn't have to be confronted by reality if he doesn't choose to.

On the heels of that revelation comes another: because Xaldin and Xigbar are the only students left from the Bastion, they are now responsible for keeping their leader sane.

Lexaeus would have come up with something appropriately philosophical: that acting out physically was a way to remind yourself that your body was still there, and that's why Xemnas has chosen to confront the facts in this particular way. Or that they're relying on physical cues to help ground them, to give them stability in a universe gone haywire. Or, even more basic: that sentient beings have always reacted to death by a triggered impulse to couple, regardless of any actual possibilities for breeding.

But Xaldin suspects the real answer has nothing to do with biological impulses at all. It's simple.

Giving in to the lancer is better than giving in the rest of the way to madness.

* * *

At some point, the original purpose of their encounters begins to fade. Xemnas begins to research again, reading books that pile up on his half of the bed and spill onto the floor. Sometimes he talks so much that Xaldin becomes bored and rolls over onto his side and gets _himself_ off with a few pumps of his hand, wondering what the point of _being_ there was at all.

But Xemnas continues to visit for the same reason that Xemnas keeps rambling on in conversation: there's no one else left alive from the Bastion to hear, no one save for Xigbar, and Xaldin has the sneaking suspicion that Xemnas haunts the gunner too.

Neither one of them can discuss science with Xemnas in the way that he needs. They're intelligent enough to field back theories, but their specializations are in different fields; neither can indulge in the wild flights of insight that Zexion and Vexen had preferred. The best they can hope for is to offer the same endless strength that Lexaeus provided to them all, the sober dose of realism that might help moor down their leader.

All they can do is be there, and listen, and watch as the Superior wrestles with his own exotic form of insanity.

Every time that Xaldin pushes back these days, Xemnas retreats before him. Every time their discussions turn to confrontation, Xemnas seems to slip a little further away. It's impossible to determine who's in control, or how; Xaldin finds himself watching Xemnas now to make certain the man is alert, that he is still _present_ instead of suddenly metamorphasizing into a translucent form of power. Xemnas yields, but it's _Xaldin_ who reacts. It's Xaldin who's trying to keep up in a race he doesn't even begin to understand.

"No matter how much I touch you, it still seems as if you're not even here," he finds himself volunteering one evening, as Xemnas blinks up at him in confusion from the other half of the bed. A scattering of bangs is in the man's face, white lace on tan cloth. Xaldin, looking down, wonders if he should feel the urge to brush them away. Instead, he simply waits for the Superior to answer.

"Maybe it's a reflection of Nothingness," Xemnas finally replies, sliding back down upon his pillow. "There could be such side-effects. I'd have to look into it." Idly, one hand reaches out. His fingers trace a wandering path before dipping between the lancer's thighs, and Xaldin inhales sharply.

When Xemnas does not stop, Xaldin wrinkles his nose, shoving the stray hand away. "Not in the mood."

"Then stop talking," Xemnas orders. "Don't say things that make me _think_ right now."

"Like?"

"Anything that reminds me of the unfinished equations in the labs that Vexen claimed he'd finish before he left for Oblivion."

"Oh."

Xaldin's not sure what else to add to that aborted sound -- he had always assumed that the two apprentices had finally come to a head in their scientific differences, and had split their research permanently apart. Vexen stayed in his laboratories. Xemnas moved on, embracing the theoretical without needing to dissect it.

The tone of Xemnas's words makes it hard to determine if there was any unseen reconciliation; judging by the way that the Superior had rolled away, Xemnas isn't planning to volunteer anything more than that either.

He lets the matter go there, tussling briefly with the other man over who gets which share of the blankets. Xemnas always steals more than his fair half; rather than argue, Xaldin usually digs more out of the closets, only to have the Superior abscond with those too.

Xemnas yawns when Xaldin settles an arm along his hip. Xaldin retaliates by sticking his cold feet against the other man's calves.

When the lancer opens his eyes much later, the hour is still night. At first, he's not sure what roused him. It could have been nothing at all. Getting used to Xemnas staying in his bed is like learning how to sleep with a pufferfish for a pillow; it wasn't enjoyable when Braig tried it back when they were kids, and it's not restful now. Xemnas likes to roll over frequently in the night. He also kicks Xaldin in the shins.

But there's no warning throb in either of Xaldin's legs, and for once, he's not freezing from lack of covers. Xemnas hasn't left the room either, so it couldn't have been the man's absence that triggered Xaldin to wake.

Then the mass of Xemnas's body makes a small twitch in the sheets, and Xaldin's senses kick themselves awake with a jolt of adrenaline.

A hum of power is gradually building in the room. Like an electrical generator running hot in the middle of summer -- an undercurrent of noise that warns of insulation melting and internal destruction only a few degrees away -- the pressure in the air is heavy enough to make Xaldin's ears ache, and he resists the urge to shake his head to clear them.

Xemnas is the source. The Superior's muscles are making tiny shudders as he's curled up, hands forming tight fists, one of them pressing against his temple. But his eyes are open, and that is the worst part: the man's pupils look dilated, dark circles enveloping arcs of yellow and red. He looks at the room without seeing it. He does not blink when Xaldin leans over him.

"Xemnas," the lancer says very softly, very conscious of the threat that is lying in his bed.

"I can rework my Sorcerers." The words are ragged, so faint that they are almost lost. "I can take all that Nothing and make it mine. Everyone's Dusks," he whispers. The skin is tight over Xemnas's cheekbones, his eyes slightly widened and frantic -- evidence of the faint mania of inspiration, of discovery, of scientific forays that devour the seekers who pursue them. "Everyone's power. It's so simple, when I think about it. It'd be so easy to resurrect them."

Xaldin does not fight this time. Instead, he rolls over to pin Xemnas's body to the mattress, using his greater mass to force the other man's limbs to unclench. He's not as tall as the Superior, but there's a great deal more muscle tone on Xaldin's bones, and the lancer is well aware of how to use it.

Xemnas surrenders without protest for once. The only resistance to Xaldin's presence shows itself in the feverishness that burns on the Superior's skin, that makes his lungs work in shallow draughts. Shadow thorns spike around the bed in waves as Xaldin presses his weight against the other man -- as if his own body heat could save the other from a hypothermia of the soul -- and listens to him breathe.

He wakes up later to find Xemnas's mouth on his throat. The wet heat of Xemnas's tongue makes its slow way along the underside of Xaldin's jaw; his teeth make sharp, hungry nips on the rim of the lancer's ear. Xemnas takes Xaldin's earlobe between his lips at approximately the same time that Xaldin becomes dimly aware that his own hands are moving over Xemnas's legs, over his ass, pressing him close.

The world devolves to simplicity. In the dimmed lights of the bedroom, Xaldin forgets problems of sanity and Darkness and Nobodies; the locks of his hair look like black snakes on Xemnas's back, or Heartless tendrils. It might have been him who reached for Xemnas first. It might have been Xemnas. Half-asleep, it no longer matters who is supposed to top, and why it is important at all beyond mere physical impulses. The act might have always been meaningless between them; it might have always been an expression of mastery, of control.

He doesn't wait for Xemnas to relax all the way around his fingers this time before he takes initiative, angling his hips, forgetting boundaries as he pushes inside and feels the slick heat of Xemnas tight around him. For a moment, he pauses, glad that one of them had remembered to apply gel beforehand; then he thrusts again.

Xemnas clenches his eyes shut, and groans.

They move slowly for the first time, slow enough that Xaldin's breath catches in his throat in a series of tiny gasps, forcing himself to maintain restraint. Any resolve for patience inevitably breaks; the lancer grips the other man by the waist, one broad palm on Xemnas's spine. Sweat coats them both. He doesn't have the attention to spare for stroking Xemnas off right now -- he can only hope that Xemnas remembers, or cares.

Xaldin's ankles scream from lack of circulation as he leans back against the headboard, Xemnas braced on his lap. But his fingers dig hard into Xemnas's skin, and his hips rock the other man, and then everything crests together in a rush that makes him forget about the pain, about anything other than the body curved tight against him, and the smell of Xemnas's hair.

Xemnas hisses an energy conversion formula, and then comes hard.

* * *

In the morning, Xaldin rolls over to discover that the Superior is already awake. The skies are clear for once -- a rare enough event -- and the oblique weight of Kingdom Hearts glimmers over the city like a serene god. "Tell me something," he grunts, feeling the slow, satisfying ache of sex still in his bones.

The man under question is sprawled on his side, watching the moon gleam through balcony windows. There is the shadow of a bruise on the inside of his wrist, exactly the size of Xaldin's mouth. "Mm?"

"What's the difference between Darkness and Nothing?"

There is no answer for a time, and at first, Xaldin thinks that none will come. Then Xemnas finally speaks. "The Darkness has a unified presence." The sound of his voice is unworried, detached, as if they were discussing old test results and extra credit that never got asked. "That's the danger about it -- it draws you in, welcomes you, makes you feel at home. But no matter how long I look into Nothingness, there's no force reaching back. The only things I can find there are the Organization. And even that," he continues quietly, "is not lasting forever. Even that is going away."

* * *

"I think he's losing his memory again," the lancer remarks to Xigbar around lunchtime, almost conversationally as the two pass each other by in the hall.

"_Wonderful_," Xigbar says, and the word is a curse.

Such a reaction seems uncustomarily strong for the situation, and Xaldin pauses in the hall, one hand idly guiding his spears to keep them from accidentally colliding with the gunner. "Why?"

"He _needs_ his past." Flipping through the pages in the latest Luxord-penned folder -- Xaldin can see a notecard stapled to the front, labeled with one of Luxord's cheery _Smile!_ reminders -- the gunner closes it with a snap and tosses it to the Sniper attendant trotting along behind him. "Look. Being a student was his entire world. Without those three around, who's going to remind him that he once was a guy named Xehanort -- or that he's Xemnas -- except for us?"

Xaldin mulls over the words. Then he thinks he understands: even without a heart, the lack of anything to rely upon can be unsettling. Every time he dives between worlds, there are only eight points of reference to orient himself to instead of thirteen; it sends a twinge through him when he leasts expects it, urging him to glance over his shoulder. The emptiness has become emptier -- or it would, if Xaldin could _feel_ it, could make his own brain understand that dead is _dead and gone._

"I doubt that Xemnas will fall prey to such a trap. Namine," he protests, feeling a vague, fatal weakness in his example, but unwilling to discard the idea, "is pliable to suggestion, but she is not out of control."

"Yeah, and look at how messed up that Roxas kid is," the gunner parries deftly. "When you don't remember yourself, it's too easy to become a tool for your own power. You end up as whatever people tell you to be. We proved it once, Xaldin. That's what landed us all here. Remember?"

Xaldin shakes his head in dismissal, opening his own world folder to scan briefly through the contents. _Halloween Town_, the label says, and Luxord's footnote this time involves something about bringing proper holiday spirit, along with gifts back for everyone in the Organization. "It'd be impossible for him to forget Ansem, though," he comments, wondering already what Luxord intends by including a wish list. "At least we have that."

It's Xigbar's turn to stop now, planting his feet in the middle of the hall, spreading one hand with a flap that hits Xaldin in the chest. "Even better. Instead of a normal leader," he barks sardonically, "we'll have a man who only remembers some old argument he had with his teacher a _decade_ ago. Tell me, Xaldin -- how's _that_ supposed to be an improvement?"

* * *

How much of the gunner's warning is accurate, Xaldin isn't sure. It might not be death that's keeping Xemnas vulnerable. There are a multitude of influences that they war against, not the least of which is a rabid Keyblade Master who's been missing for the better part of a year. Betrayal came thrice-fold from Oblivion as well: Marluxia, Larxene, and to a lesser degree, Namine by virtue of her disappearance. It is the first potential schism that the Organization has suffered since their formation, the one that goes to remind them that -- despite their isolation and self-protection -- all things end.

He suggests this to Xigbar while they are out searching Agrabah and trying to split half a wrap of falafels at the same time.

The gunner scoffs. "No. We turned on our own master, remember?" Metal clicks as he reloads his gun and aims down the barrel towards a tower far on the horizon line. "He just doesn't like that people aren't around anymore. It's not betrayal that's bugging him. It's _absence._"

When Xaldin finally decided to stop waltzing around the issue and ask directly, Xemnas only looks faintly surprised. "Are you _still_ thinking about such things?" His voice can't seem to decide between scorn and reproach; the result is a quixotic puzzlement, punctuated by the crook of one pale eyebrow.

Xaldin makes a see-saw motion of his hand in the air. It's a ridiculous thing to pursue, constantly prying at a wound-that-isn't, but nothing else is making sense. He's half-tempted to turn the entire issue over to Xigbar entirely. Let the gunner make a fool of himself instead. "Yes."

The Superior gives him a long stare before he decides the inquiry is honest. "It's because I'm so powerless," he states at last, without bothering to cover the confession up with bravado. "I need to find out more. To know more, _do_ more. I want control over every life that passes me by."

The claim is arrogant, and familiar. Xaldin speaks without thinking. "You sound like Vexen."

"Vexen." Xemnas's mouth settles into a smirk, and he pokes at the falafel bowl that Xigbar sent home along with the report. "When I have the power of Kingdom Hearts," he comments, "I will bring them back. Everyone who has been lost. I will restore them. Even Marluxia and Larxene, I suppose." Picking up one of the falafel balls, Xemnas studies it before dropping it back onto the plate. "I may as well punish them for their rebellion, so they may learn the cost of misbehaving. I will bring them back from death, and everything will be restored, and our world will be real at last."

Something about the way that Xemnas asserts his goals -- the matter-of-fact delivery, or the tilt of his jaw as he meets Xaldin's eyes and does not look away -- sets the lancer's stomach queasy for the rest of the day. Logically, he knows that the Superior is not serious. He can't be. Not even the gods of the petty little worlds they have visited can perform such acts, not where hearts are involved. The Organization has tried. They have looked.

Xemnas pulls away that night during sex, stumbling halfway off the bed and across the floor. Thorn-tendrils coil up automatically from the floor to catch him, and Xaldin, glaring at the Nothingness, wonders if it's possible to develop a fierce dislike of something on a purely intellectual basis.

When he tries to reach out to Xemnas -- wondering, curiously, if sex would suffice to distract the man again, or at least burn off some of his energy -- the other man only staggers further across the room. He tilts heavily to the side; the Nothingness is there to support his weight, as his muscles go slack and almost dump him on the ground. Vines snake around his legs and arms. They seep into his skin, into his hair. When he straightens up, there's a tension in his face that gives it a foreign cast, fit for a stranger -- but Xigbar has _seen_ that manic look on Xemnas once before. It came right before all the Darkness broke loose. It came on a day when Xemnas was still known as Xehanort, and as Ansem at the same time.

"It's time to go," the past whispers, shedding all trace of weakness as easily as its own sanity. "Kingdom Hearts is almost complete."

This time, instead of Shadows, red energy coalesces around Xemnas's hands. Vines wrap over his flesh like a living glove, dressing him in patterns of streaked white and black. He moves towards the balcony doors, and then is _through_ them without pausing; if it was the Superior's physical hands or his power that blew the windows apart, Xaldin isn't sure, save that both have been shattered off their hinges.

At first, it seems as if Xemnas is content to simply look at the sky outside. Then a touch of his hand against stone buoys him into the air, levitating him as easily as a puff-weed, and the Superior steps off the railing.

Xaldin swears once, eloquently; the dockside curse rolls off his mouth. Spears come to his hand before he's halfway off the bed. The first Dragoons he summons come to a clustered halt on the balcony, their diamond wings fluttering in agitation, heads pointed with a hound's sharp attention as they look at him, and then _past_ him into the room.

When the lancer takes a step forward, the Dusks snap to attention, lowering their weapons in unison towards him.

Xaldin stares at them hard for a moment before they seem to recognize his authority. It's not a good sign for his own chosen Nobodies to obey Xemnas even against the lancer's direct command; what's more worrisome is that Xemnas makes no outward signs of ordering them. Instead, the Dusks are reacting on instinct to protect the Superior from an external danger.

They are reacting to Xaldin as the threat.

He dismisses them with a thought. At first they do not respond, and he is forced to bark the order aloud, glaring at them each in turn until they fade away. The night air is cool on his bare skin. If anyone saw him right now, they would pause at his nakedness, but Xaldin doesn't care. Normally he would conjure Darkness for clothing, or even bind Nothingness to the task -- but here, while both forces are in rebellion, such acts seem foolhardy. His spears are only trustworthy because he has fought with them so long that their weights are ingrained in the memories of his muscles; the Dusks are not.

He throws himself into midair, and feels the winds catch him.

The night is pregnant with humidity. It lingers on the cusp of rain, distorting the streetlights in a haze, bringing the scent of something damp and growing to Xaldin's nose. Far in the distance above them -- past even the towers and clouds and moon -- there are dots that look like stars, but Xaldin knows that those lights do not belong to the City.

Xemnas has not gone far. The Superior hovers in the sky, dressed in absolutes of white and black. His hands are stretched towards the half-formed moon; red energy shimmers around his fingers, drawing patterns that intertwine with Nothing-thorns and causes them to burn with a cold fire. His attention is fixed upon Kingdom Hearts, but a thin shell of Darkness circles him, forming a translucent orb to keep the man safe within.

Xaldin does not hesitate. He punches out with the first lance, spinning it deftly around his forearm and then outwards until there are three lethal points jabbing forward, three and four and five, with only one spear held in reserve in event of a last-ditch protection. The initial attack skids off the shadow-ward; the second as well, clashing harmlessly against the Superior's armor.

It takes a third round of spears to come crashing against the conjured defenses, and then at last the Superior shakes himself out of his trance. Xaldin has already closed the distance between them. The darkness is a gelatinous bubble against his hands; it presses gently, and then parts, leaving a sticky trail between his fingers.

The inner layer of dancing thorns scratch at Xaldin's flesh before they recognize his kinship, turning as soft as thistledown.

He lunges forward through the mismatched shields of Nothingness and Darkness, ripping through artificial gauze and vine alike. The solid mass of Xemnas's body collides into his own; the lancer grabs the other man around the waist, plucking him from the sky as neatly as Xigbar shooting a sparrow.

They land in a tumble of limbs on the nearest rooftop, rolling over twice as both fight to simultaneously end up on top and attempt not to fall. Xaldin recovers first. A cushion of air pushes back against his weight as he skids, bare soles scraping themselves painfully on slate until a crenellation surfaces out of nowhere, and slams into Xaldin's hip.

He grunts, but does not release his hold.

The nearest spear under his control comes down, cracking the marble as true steel never could. The mouth of the blade pins itself on Xemnas's wrist -- a metal cuff lined with razors -- and the Superior makes a pained noise, kicking out one foot.

Xaldin ignores it, straddling the other man's ribs. The exertion has warmed his blood enough that he doesn't feel the cold anymore, but he knows it will return once he lets his guard down, and he does not look forward to exhaustion. His thumb wipes awkwardly at the thin beads of blood that have begun to well up from the Superior's arm, slender gashes that stripe across the dark skin where it has rubbed against the spear.

"Stop it," he orders, fervently. "You'll hurt yourself."

His words have limited effect. Xemnas's lungs heave before he manages to focus on the man who is pinning him down. "There's so much power, Xaldin." Night air whispers down the curves of the rooftops and wicks heat off the lancer's body; he clenches his jaw harder, and grinds one knee into the meat of the Superior's stomach. The man does not flinch. "Can't you sense it?"

"Enough to lose yourself in it," the lancer acknowledges aloud, his lip curling. He has heard the phrase a million times from the Superior; he has tried to ignore it each time, pretend that what Xemnas was saying did not exist. "Enough to lose your identity, which is the only thing that keeps you from -- " His throat closes there. _Being a Dusk,_ he wants to say, but the word _slavery_ sticks in his throat, as does _insanity._

The Superior only closes his eyes, shaking his head in a slight whisper against the roof tiles. "I'm not losing. I'm _gaining_," he insists. "Kingdom Hearts will give me everything. Everything that any of us could hope for. Don't you want eternity?" The tendons of Xemnas's trapped wrist twitch; Xaldin finds himself watching the slow lines of blood begin to seep together, forming a thin, dark webbing on the tanned skin. "How can you say no to forever?"

Wrenching the spear out of the roof, Xaldin sits back, relying on his weight to keep the other man pinned. He dismisses the weapon with a thought; he will have to clean it later, or remind himself to clean it, or at least go through the motions, since the blades are pristine each time he summons them. "I want to exist, Xemnas. As _myself_ \-- not a mere extension of my heart." Frowning, he reaches out, resting his palm against the man's head to check for fever. The fingers on that hand have been stained from Xemnas's wounds; there is a dark smudge left behind where he touches. "That's what this whole project was about. You have to remember that. Don't let yourself be drawn in again."

Against the physical contact, the Superior finally relaxes. The crackle of power in the air ebbs away. He looks mortal again suddenly, mortal and weak, lying on a rooftop in a pair of drawstring pants.

"How can I," the man whispers, his eyes still closed, his mouth barely making the framework of a smile, "when you and Xigbar keep holding me back?"


	4. Epilogue

Xaldin limps around the next day with his arms sore and aching, his muscles in unified complaint for the beating he has put them through. His bones ache from lack of sleep. Even when Xemnas had surrendered his half of the fight, allowing himself to be ushered back to bed, Xaldin had stayed up through the thin hours of the morning just in case it would all happen again.

When Xigbar finds him, the lancer has only one resigned answer:

"He's going insane."

Down the hall, they can both hear Xemnas speaking; it's the pre-noon status report meeting, full of the usual business that Xaldin likes to skip. Xemnas is giving out his orders with flawless scorn, and the absolute confidence of a dictator. His public lapse has not been repeated. If anyone of the younger Organization members sense their Superior's weakness, they do not say, and he does not show it.

"Are you sure?"

Xaldin feels his stomach pinch itself around the dry crust of toast he'd wolfed down for breakfast. "Yes."

"Okay." Xigbar covers his face with one gloved hand, silent for all of three seconds. "Okay," he says again around his fingers, and then, "Do we _know?_ I mean. How do we really _know_ what he's capable of anymore? Maybe he's not crazy. Maybe he really _can_ do half this stuff."

Xaldin only delivers a flat stare back. "If he were normal," is his stark, dispassionate reply, "do you really think he'd be spending this much time around _me?_"

That wins the argument, and they both know it. There are only so many straws that either of them can grasp at; ancient forms of humor should be a last resort, and they've come a long way since being children in the Bastion, sniping back and forth at each other's personality flaws with any sincerity. "You have a point," Xigbar sighs, dropping his hands to his sides -- but he doesn't bother to fake a laugh, and Xaldin doesn't bother to smile. "Okay. I'll talk to him. I'll see what I can do."

Catching the Superior alone isn't too difficult to manage. Both of them take up position in the hall as they wait for the meeting to end; their absence might have generated some commentary, but it's not too uncommon for them both to skip attendance and claim business off-world. They could set better examples, but Xigbar makes up for his lapses by pinching Demyx's meeting notes, and Xaldin hears it all each night anyway.

And theirs are not the only chairs empty.

Roxas is the first to leave, as usual. He prowls out the door with only a token glance in the direction of his seniors, performing a faint inclination of his head in a glimmer of respect. Half the Organization members have simply vanished from the room rather than go through the effort of climbing down from the impossibly designed chairs. Luxord is more traditional than the rest; he departs by foot, still wearing a professional smile as he strolls back to his own business.

Xaldin is occupied with a prolonged staring match between himself and the Flurry of Dancing Flames -- Axel exited the meeting with a fox's sidle, squinting aimably at them both -- when he hears Xigbar speak up. "Hey. Xemnas. C'mere."

The Superior is caught blinking in the doorway. At first he only looks slightly ruffled at the interruption, as if he were a peacock who has just been called a chicken and asked to visit the kitchen later that day. Then his eyes flicker in Xaldin's direction, and something creeps into his posture: a lessening of his guard, or possibly his humanity returning.

By the time Xaldin belatedly remembers his staring match, Axel is already gone.

Xigbar doesn't waste any effort on tact. He skips use of the meeting chamber -- meeting _circle_, as it could be more accurately called, since the only furnishings are the chairs plastered to the walls -- and claims one of the rooms adjacent instead, flicking on the lights. White dropcloths coat the furniture, puddling on the ground. Private reading cubbies are everywhere in the Castle; this one, like the others, stands abandoned since the destruction of Oblivion.

Xigbar gives the Superior an inelegant shove inside, claiming a chair for himself and promptly flipping it around so he can straddle the seat.

"Organization XIII is gone." His statement comes with the same lack of sympathy as a bullet. "Vexen, Lexaeus, and Zexion are gone. Marluxia and Larxene -- better that they're dead. There's still eight of us left. You don't have to be so upset, Mister Superior."

"I'm _not_," Xemnas protests. Confusion litters his voice, a tiny slice of vulnerability through all the polished veneer. He shifts his weight, glancing around for a convenient chair to salvage his own dignity with; finding none, he remains standing, folding his arms in defensive pride. "This isn't anger. It isn't hate. Even if I tried, I wouldn't be able to grieve. I would need my heart back first."

"Idiot, _idiot_," is the reply, whispered curses as Xigbar closes his eye. Leather squeaks as the gunner clenches his hands into fists on the back of the chair. "Haven't you learned yet? _You don't need a heart in order to react._"

There is silence for a time. Xaldin shifts, turning away from the doorway, sensing an intimacy of conversation that he is not a part of. This is Xigbar's privacy. Xaldin should not intrude on it any more than he'd want someone to see the way he'd been gripping the bedsheets last night, shivering beneath Xemnas's harsh thrusts.

But he lingers, unable to part himself from the room, to remove himself from the triad of survivors. Xemnas, Xigbar, Xaldin: the only legacy of a cadre of students who thought they could change their world by finding ultimate knowledge, regardless of the price. If they leave a history behind, it will mention nothing of these most important battles -- the ones tucked away in forgotten rooms, fiercely restrained encounters where the prize was not territory or dominance, but _sanity._

Finally, Xaldin hears the gunner speak again, this time in soft forgiveness.

"Aw, man. No one can _ever_ reach you sometimes, can they?"

Xemnas makes a noise like a sigh and a cough and a laugh all at once. "I am the Superior," he offers, a little helplessly. "I will accomplish my goals."

Xigbar shuffles his arms, draping them off the back of his chair. The buckles on his gunbelts click. "Which ones?"

"To gain Kingdom Hearts."

"Why?"

"So we can live forever."

The gunner pulls in a breath like it hurts him, and then exhales it all like invisible smoke, his chin tilted back, mouth slightly pursed. "Okay. It's fine. It's fine," he repeats, directing his resignation to the ceiling. "There are eight members of the Organization still here. When you're ready, we can renumber everyone and move on. Just as long," Xigbar adds, grinning hard enough that the expression is almost forced, _almost_, "as I still get to be Two."

Xemnas is absent that night from Xaldin's bed, but he's at breakfast the next morning, energetic with all the signs of a long night's sleep. Something seems to have broken in his resolute isolation. He's relaxed with the members of the Organization again, comfortable whenever anyone addresses him. He fields a discussion about artificial deconstruction with ease, and waves away Saix's concerns about Heartless chocobos. He laughs a little during lunch. The sound is almost real.

That evening, Xemnas is already running the shower by the time Xaldin returns home from a scouting overview. It only surprises the lancer a little that the Superior has settled in casually. Xaldin had never expected it -- and would guess that Xemnas hadn't either -- but convenience has gradually become habit, which has become a state of normality after all.

The shower smells like coconut steam. As he inhales, Xaldin makes a mental note to throw out all of Xemnas's soaps, and blame it on a Dusk.

While he waits for Xemnas to get out, Xaldin wanders through his quarters, noting the signs of the other man's occupation. There's a fresh set of books stacked up on one of the desks -- a collection from the libraries, some philosopher or the other that Xaldin dimly recalls not liking. His tin of boot polish has been moved aside to make room for a bell jar. A few white hairs have been left behind on the second pillow on the bed. Somehow, without even speaking about it, they had mutually decided which side was Xemnas's and which belonged to the lancer.

Somehow, along the way, they had all reoriented themselves to the gaps in their lives.

It's a strange, bizarre situation that they've arrived at. Xemnas had been the one to initiate the change, seeking out Xaldin for relief, speaking in a language of the body even simpler than their occasional combat spars. They were used to violence, they had known sex -- and then something else entirely had entered into the equation, something that had struggled all around the subject of _loss_ without being able to perceive it directly.

But the fight has not changed. It has put on a different face, tried a different tack, but underneath it all there is still a single man's uncertainty, and self-destruction waiting if any of them should fail.

For now, Xigbar's words are all they can rely on. There are eight members of the Organization still alive. They can move on.

The Castle exists for a week in relative peace. Xemnas complains briefly about the lack of his own soaps; Xaldin replaces them neatly with scents that he prefers: crisp pines and something branded as _Ocean Winds_, which smells nothing like the sea. Luxord acts like Axel's bad handwriting is a new development. Saix puzzles over the ornate conch shell that Demyx brought back from one world. He settles with throwing it to his Berserkers and letting them play at targets with it; the shell eventually shatters on the marble when one Dusk misses the catch, and Demyx's horrified yowl echoes through the entire Castle.

A week is how long it takes before the next time that Xaldin wakes up during the middle of the night, cold sweat seeping along back of his neck. At first, he thinks that it's nothing. Then his hand finds an empty gap on the other side of the bed, and he jerks himself awake, convinced that in this one moment of vulnerability, disaster has found them all.

But Xemnas has not gone far. A few breathless seconds go by while Xaldin orients himself properly, adjusting to the variance of light and shade in his bedroom; then he sees the slender figure standing on the balcony outside, coated with the radiance of Kingdom Hearts. The doors never got fixed -- Xaldin has the sneaking suspicion that the instant he puts a set back up, Xemnas will only destroy them again -- and for now, they have had to put up with cold drafts and puddles whenever it rains.

Xemnas is not conjuring hundreds of fiends. He is not working with any sort of power, and that fact alone is the sole reason why Xaldin does not summon his weapons in preparation of an attack. Instead, he slides off the bed, padding across the floor, wondering what the Superior is planning now. Bathed in the light of a million hearts, Xemnas looks like a creature out of legend. If Xaldin could believe in salvation, it might resemble a man like this: swathed in silver, head upturned, seeking a future beyond what any mortal might have dreamed.

But Xaldin knows better. Brushing aside the curtains, the lancer wavers on the edge between his room and the balcony, feeling the warmth of the bedroom lick his back. The cooler night air touches his chest in warning. He leans away from it. "Are you going to be all right?"

There is a long silence. Then, softly, in mirror to a phrase uttered months ago, Xemnas speaks. "I want to win."

Back when he first heard those words, Xaldin had assumed they referred to sparring -- to winning in _bed_, since the Superior cannot best him in hand-to-hand combat. Now the lancer isn't half so sure. "You're slipping away no matter what we do," he says, but not unkindly. City lights blink far below. "Just like the first time. And, just like then, we aren't able to stop it."

Xemnas does not take his gaze away from the sky. "It must be done." His fingers draw tiny circles on the balcony rail. "Who better for the job than someone who has no memory to miss?" he tries to add, laughing, but the joke is poor and he gives up on the noise after a few seconds.

Xaldin stands unmoved. "Xehanort said that too, back then." He lets himself be taken by silence for a moment, and then offers up the one conclusion he has never been able to escape in all the years since he has known the other man. "You have always reacted to loss by seeking out power, Xemnas. Now is no different."

The accusation brings little more than a shrug from the Superior's direction. "That's a good thing," he counters, unhesitatingly. "It means that, eventually, I will be the most powerful being to ever exist."

The practicality is fatalistic, but Xaldin cannot argue with it. That's what they wanted Xemnas to be -- that's what they _asked_ him to become, back when they were still arguing about Braig's relativity principles and Even's varying experiments with fusion. To lose is to _gain_, by Xemnas's logic, like a fire burning its own stomach out for fuel. And when _eventually_ is a certainty, that means that the Superior expects everything to disappear.

If there is a means to undo this destruction, Xaldin knows he will not be able to uncover it. Not now. The balance is precarious enough, with a world lost and a mentor gone, and half of them destroyed by an uncertain enemy. If there is a way out, Xemnas will have to be the one to find it.

The only question now is how much more they will lose along the way.

He steps out onto the balcony, fingers sliding along the other man's spine, half-expecting that they will fight, or fuck, or both -- or that Xemnas will fall asleep halfway through the grand exposition of the latest theory he's read. Any token resistance would be a good sign. It's normal for the Superior to show evidence of rebellion; doing so wears the edge off his nerves, breaking down the stubborn pride of his defenses, and Xaldin is accustomed to conflict.

But Xemnas doesn't struggle tonight; he yields early, unexpectedly so, his muscles relaxing against Xaldin's hands. The lancer does not force him to move. He takes Xemnas by the shoulders, gently urging him to turn around, until the other man's face finally comes into view and reveals the blank simplicity of its expression.

Xemnas's eyes are half-closed. He is not looking at the lancer, but _past_ him, up at the artificial moon. A slice of it floats in his pupils, as if he were being woven into Kingdom Hearts itself, made a part of the creation without having to die first in order to get there.

"Xemnas." The word is gruff.

"Mm?"

Xaldin's hand touches the man's arm, and then gives it a shake. "Come back."

Xemnas doesn't say anything, but he closes his eyes after a while, and leans his head forward until it rests on Xaldin's shoulder.

They go to bed early. Xaldin dreams of home for the first time in a long while: machine oil mixes with the salt of the Rising Falls, and the smell of fresh pies from the castle kitchens. The voices of old friends sing through the air. There are boats, there are gardens; there are teenage hopes and fantasies demanding to live forever, forever and a day and more.

When he wakes up this time, Xaldin reaches out and finds the warmth of Xemnas's hand before falling back asleep.


End file.
